Top 10 Medieval News Stories of 2012
The year 2012 was one of fascinating discoveries, some of which made international news. The year ends with something of a cliffhanger, as our #1 story has not yet come to a conclusion.
Origins of the Medieval Theory That Sensation Is an Immaterial Reception of a Form
Let me begin my own discussion of Aquinas by saying that it seems to me that Cohen adequately proved that it was a mistake to view the sensible form as existing in the soul rather than the organ, and that Aquinas is not denying to the sensible form as received by the sensor a place in the physical world, or indeed physical existence, when he says it exists immaterially or spiritually.
Dancing Devils and Singing Angels: Dance Scenes in German Religious Plays
The early Church had a mostly critical attitude towards the dance. It was said that those who dance cherish heathen godheads and that they allow their bodies rule over their minds. Repeatedly, the synods prohibited religious dances and/or dances within churches.
The History of English in Ten Minutes
Learn where words like house, loaf, bishop, font, drag, die, jury, justice, swine, mutton, pork, eyeball and alligator came from!
Manhood, kingship and the public in late medieval England
Were medieval kings like other men? A century’s work on the sacrality of kingship has tended to stress how kings differed from their fellow adult males, even fellow nobles.
Sine Nomine: Ensemble for Medieval Music
Profile of the Toronto-based quartet Sine Nomine, with two videos from a recent performance.
The Crusades Go Global: Crusading in the 16th Century
Today I will argue that the crusades, an already well-established, world-historical movement went global in the 16th century.
Holy War as a theme in World History: A Prolegomenon to Further Research
My new research, which goes far beyond the theology and practice of holy war within Christianity and Islam, is still in its early stages, but today I propose to offer some preliminary thoughts on holy war as a global phenomenon and, as time allows, to discuss in a bit of detail the crusades.
England: One Country, Two Courts
The tension created by the two-court system is an integral part of England’s administrative and constitutional history. Exactly how integral has generated a considerable amount of scholarly work, from explanations of the sources of the conflict, to how the disagreement over jurisdiction was addressed throughout the Middle Ages, to what impact the issue had in shaping England’s overall political development.
Christmas in the Qur’än: the Qur’änic account of Jesus’s nativity and Palestinian local tradition
The confluence of this evidence strongly suggests that the traditions associated with Kathisma church gave rise to the rather peculiar account of Christ’s Nativity found in the Quran.
Fleas, Flies, and Friars: Children’s Poetry from the Middle Ages
In Fleas, Flies, and Friars, Nicholas Orme, an expert on childhood in the Middle Ages, has gathered a wide variety of children’s verse that circulated in England beginning in the 1400s, providing a way for modern readers of all ages to experience the medieval world through the eyes of its children.
Looking Back: Medieval French Romance and the Dynamics of Seeing
This dissertation builds upon the work of feminist medievalists and other literary and cultural scholars to argue that sight, and objects that are seen, articulate love relationships between characters in medieval romances, and that seeing is frequently a locus of resistance to gender norms the texts both establish and refuse to accept.
Pilgrimage and Embodiment: Captives and the Cult of Saintsin Late Medieval Bavaria
Chief among the stories contained in these miracle stories are tales of escapes from captivity. Almost forty percent of the reports in the two Munich Latin miracle collections deal with liberations from imprisonment and escapes from captivity of various sorts.
Querimonia desolacionis terre sancte – The fall of Acre and the Holy Land in 1291 as an emotional element in the Teutonic Order tradition
Those Military Orders − the Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights, along with other Military Orders, had shed their blood across the Latin Kingdom and suffered many casualties in the final siege which took place in Acre between March and May 1291.
The Children of Ash: Cosmology and the Viking Universe
What I am really going to be talking about throughout these lectures is stories, the power of stories, and the role that narrative played in the life of the Vikings, its influence on their perception of the world in which they understood themselves to move.
Hebrew Astrology in Byzantine Southern Italy
It is a commonplace that our modern, tidy distinction between astronomy and astrology does not apply to the Middle Ages.
Breuddwyd Rhonabwy: A historical narrative?
The object of this study is the analysis of Breuddwyd Rhonabwy, which is one of the two extant Welsh prose tales about King Arthur.
Edition, Translation, and Exegesis: The Carolingians and the Bible
In their attention to philological procedures and details, to the work of editing, revising, and translating, ninth-century scholars made a lasting contribution to the ways in which Europeans would think about the Bible.
St Edmund of East Anglia and his miracles: variations in literature and art
Edmund was said to have been crowned at the age of just fourteen years by St Humbert on 25 December 855 in the then royal capital Burna, (probably Bures St Mary, Suffolk). Almost nothing is known of his life and reign, though he was recorded as a just and uncompromising ruler, the embodiment of the Greek ideal of the kalòs kai agathòs – that is, the right balance of the Good and the Beautiful, the combination of virtues that could create the perfect nobleman.
Drauginir: Revenants in Old Icelandic Sagas
It is this humanity in a monster that helps to show why these draugar fascinate us so much. The “others” that exist outside the boundaries of society: the weird old ladies that people label as evil witches, the misshapen, the “freaks” that Tod Browning made famous are funhouse mirror images of ourselves.
Late Medieval Scottish Swords: Strength and Balance from the North
Like the warriors who wielded them, late medieval Scottish swords were distinctive and deadly. The cutting power of these weapons was awesome, and some were reckoned better even than the blades of Gaelic legend.
Richard III’s raucous Christmas parties
Just as the company Christmas party can lead to embarrassing situations, some 15th century festivities could also lead to scandal.
From Paganism to Christianity: Transition of the Insular Celts As Seen Through The Archaeological Record
These centuries of tension and adaptation provide the evidence for the interaction of Christianity and Celtic religions, but one must use caution when examining Celtic religion because of potentially biased evidence.
Observational Archaeoastronomy at Stonehenge: Winter and Summer Solstice Sun Rise and Set Alignments Accurate to 0.2 o in 4000 BP
Our studies since 1980 of Solstice and Equalnight Sun Rise and Set alignments at an ancient site in southern Alberta, the Majorville Medicine Wheel Complex (MMWC), have drawn our attention to Stonehenge (Atkinson 1979; Burl 1976, 1993). While there might have been no ideological or religious similarities between societies in North America and Britain 5000 years ago, we know of no evidence that there was not. Indeed, Sun worship was world-wide at that time.
Knights & Dragons: Rise of the Dark Prince
For iPhone, iPad and iPod touch – save a medieval kingdom!